Tanktainers in Z Scale

I've always wanted a few tanktainers in my intermodal train, and they were reasonably common on the tracks around Wassen in the good old days - as one of my Wattinger pics taken in 2015 attests. As can be seen, the prototypes come in various lengths and the bracing and tank shapes take many forms.

For a year or more I've wondered about using styrene tube or bits of old plastic pens for the tanks and building the frames out of Plasticard, but then someone called Ngineer goes and puts a pair of 20 footers on Shapeways at a reasonable price. And that's hard to resist.

The parcel arrived promptly. It's been four or five years since I've ordered anything on Shapeways, and these seem to be of much higher print resolution - thus exhibiting far less visible strata - than those early examples. Possibly this is a new material too.

The downside is that there are a few warped bits as you might see in the above pic (before the pair were seperated). I'm not sure if this is due to the material, or heating in transit, or squeezing in transit, or possibly the designer expecting too much of the thin and flimsy unsupported material. The latter might explain the long top rails, but that there are also kinks in some of the short lower struts but not others make me wonder if this print might have been removed and mis-handled too quickly before it really hardened.

Interestingly, these tanks are a similar size to the Rokuhan Z scale 20 foot containers (in blue below) - which are noticeably smaller than the Microtrains or AZL American doublestack behind. Heights vary, but an ISO width should be an ISO width in Z scale, so the products of one of these two camps aren't to scale. Must have a measure one day.

The offending pre-mentioned saggy bits were removed, and some paint was slopped on:

Replacement framing from thin styrene strip being installed:

And that was as complex as I decided to go for now. Roofwalks, ladders and railings might be added at some later stage.

As for prototypes, I've had a Bertschi and a Den Hartogh in mind for a while now, and had doodled up some artwork for them a long time ago. This was printed out on a colour laser printer today, cut out, glued on, and voila's your uncle.

Decals would have been better than a thick sheet of printer paper of course, but not dramatically so for those of us that vigorously enforce the mandated minimum viewing distances, and this worked out pretty cheaply as I printed off a few other things on the same sheet (plus spares of these in case of screw-ups or if more are desired in future).

The finished-ish containers are perched here on a Marklin flat chassis with the blue Rokuhan 20 footer for the pics, but these bits will be made into a 'proper' wagon at some stage.

The Bertschi brown should be a smidge redder, but I can live with that for now.

Wassen Church Update

I made some clock faces for the church.

Well, I cheated a little, as they were 'borrowed' from a picture of the actual church on the interweb, which was photoshopped a little, printed out in multiple, and glued on with PVA. The printer at the local printshop has a different colour red to that on my screen of course, but it's close enough - and on the plus side they are quite nicely detailed, being scaled down reproductions of the real thing.

The real church doesn't have a clock face on the end facing the motorway, but fearing that might make it look like one of my model ones had fallen off, I've got all four sides of the tower covered in clock faces.

They were printed on white paper, and I cut out squares rather than trying to cut circles around the black faces. That white background is a slightly different colour to my creme coloured church, but it's not really noticeable, even in these pictures, which tend to show all the other glaring faults.

Such as, for example, I have no main windows on this rear side which faces the backdrop.....

Nor is there likely to ever be a proper tunnel portal down there - I'd rather be able to stick my hands in there for track cleaning within the tunnel

Road to nowhere

That black, unfinished foamboard road (my amalgam of the local road through Wassen and the A4 motorway) has lain dark, ugly and unfinished for too long..

First, some footpath/gutters.... Some stripwood will do, painted with grey:

And one side pinned down into place using contact glue:

And some plasticard sides (below):

Then I applied a roll of Noch 44100 Z scale roading. This was bought on a whim on a recent visit to a foreign hobby shop and it's quite a neat product. Crepey in nature, its flexible enough to be stretched around slight curves. It's also self adhesive.

For sharper corners, you can cut the thing in half and make tighter curves:

 Then another stick of stripwood for the other side:

  I've also started to add a bit more foliage around the place in the Wattinger tunnel area:

OK, so I've almost run out of this stuff (the roll is only a metre long) and the road is only just reaching town, but overall I'm happy with it so far. I probably should have taken some width off it as it headed into town to give a little forced perspective. 

A bridge too far?

Quite a few things have been going on at Wassen in seemingly random spurts, so these posts might seem a little out of order...

You may have noticed in recent pics that a start has been made on the 'big viaduct' on the middle level - the Mittleren Meinreuss Brücke.

In a 'chicken-and-egg-like' quandary, it is hard to put a bridge in after you have laid scenery, but it is also hard to lay scenery round after you have installed a bridge. So I figured I might put in the southern end of the viaduct so that some scenery could be applied around it in the gorge, and then later on complete the rest of the thing.

For about a year I have been looking at and purchasing various stone and brick lookalike sheets and have settled upon this Kibri plastic sheeting. t is a little overscale for Z, but to my eye, doesn't look too bad. I'm not sure if the true Z scale sheets I have seen have enough detail to pop when seen from afar.

As usual I have no plan but made some guestimated measurements from pictures and drew some lines and curves til it looked about right.

As an aside, teh cutting mat here (found for $2 at the local recycling shop) is great for not only cutting things on, but also for helping my eyeball get 90-degree corners more accurate.

After cutting, some inner facing was added to the piers

the 'blanked off' arch at left in the pics below is semi-prototypical, and the middle arch is where the Sustenpass road goes under the railway, so I have added a black blanking piece at the far end in case someone tries to peer through this...

A few capping stones and washes of paint later:

Tacked into place and the far side (which will be cut down in height) being tried on for size:

A start being made on the middle arch... A paint tin providing an appropriate radius for the main chord!

Catenary Poles for Wassen's upper level

Ta daaaaaa....  

Looking more complete (the white bits in the scenery are glue that hasn't dried yet)

The upper level at Wassen is looking tidier with the backdrop in place, and now some overhead support masts have been added to insert some detail into the scene.

As I'd done for the lower/Wattinger/Reuss level bits that have been scenicked, I built the overhead support poles for the top level from brass. Posts being made from rod,  bases of thin shim and all soldered together.

The base means you have something to glue down and to scenic around, but the solder joint and brass makes the thing reasonably impervious to breakage from knocks (while cleaning the track and so forth). Plus you can bend the joint within reason to get the posts to be vertical once everything has set. I have yet to be tempted to append detailed arms off these as that might make track cleaning a nightmare, but we shall see if I change my mind over time. At least having the vertical poles gives an impression of the overhead and its all a bit more subtle than the chunky Marklin offerings.

As to building them...

Not being able to find H section brass in a small size during recent travels, I went with a C shape that I picked up in the Whistle Stop in Pasadena. I like the shaped channel rather than using a 'plain' square rod to add a little more intricacy to the setup, and as it is only visible from the front of the layout, it doesn't matter that it isn't an H shape . The C it is a little smaller in cross section than the H used on the lower level. I also made them a little shorter to enforce a look of forced perspective as you look into the layout.

The grey one in the pic above is a leftover from the lower level so you might note the subtle difference in size that looks quite good now that these are installed. The posts were nipped to length wth side cutters and filed square-ish:

Posts and bases were wiped with flux, tinned...

And attached together with some heat from Mr Soldering Iron (it is hard to remember to take these pics while building, and with only two hands at my disposal):

The assemblies were painted with a grey primer that works well enough as a final colour for me.

The brass bases of these were contact-glued on to existing tiny plastic squares on the layout which were installed some time ago. This way, ballast could be laid around the squares before the poles went up, yet leaving a small patch of flat level surface to glue the poles to later. 

The ugliest backdrops ever created...

After much procrastination, I've decided to complete the white foamboard backdrop around the layout. As you can see, the prefab scenery panel in the middle of the top level was removed so that the backdrop could be painted behind it.

This was painted a sky-blue-ish shade... and despite me using some putty to smooth minor imperfections in the joins, I'm a bit bummed that you can see them more clearly now that the blue has been installed. This may be because of the directional lighting coming in from the right...

I also used a pretty crappy brush while applying the blue which has left some horizontal strata that also picks up bright light sources from above. Drat. Definite blue-fail.

On my last layout I experimented with super realistic photo-backdrops but here I've moved to the opposite extreme and really dumbed things down. I didn't even graduate the blue with white towards the horizon or pop any clouds in... Because Switzerland's weather is always perfect blue skies... Not.

After the blue had set, some green paint was mixed with the sky blue colour (distant things almost always inherit a bit of sky colour) and this was used to paint some rudimentary 'hill forms' behind where the scenery will be. I then used the green (which is a reasonable approximation of my pine tree colours) to vertically daub on some distant 'trees'. These are not intended to be representations of anything specific, but break up the solid colour of the 'hills' in the distance.

As you can see below, this is pretty ugly when viewed au natural...

However with the prefab scenery installed in front of it in the picture below, you can see how the ugly duckling is transformed an appropriately vague backdrop rendered in appropriate shades of nothingness that doesn't scream at you. For once, I completed painted the backdrop all around the layout, even to the ends which don't have much scenery on them yet.

Other than the messy blue I think I've gotten away with it.

With the backdrop not even dry, the prefab scenery was finally glued into place so that some overhead wiring poles could be installed on the top level of track..

Cleaning my slow and hot-running Marklin 88483

As mentioned previously, I have two Marklin 88483 'Class 152' locos that were turned into BLS 485 and 486 locos a while back. One runs pretty well, one is quite slow and runs very hot. Not ideal for double heading them....

The motor on the slow fellow seems to spin ok, but both the truck (bogie) innards are stiff to move, whereas on my other loco of the same model they run more freely.

So, fearing the dreaded HOS (hardened oil syndrome), I decided to take the trucks apart and wash them in some isopropyl alcohol (ironically, here in a wine cap).

 The gears, axles and wheelsets were disassembled and dunked for a while in the isoprop.

Then cleaned off, reassembled and lubed gently. There seemed to be a bit of old oil about before I started, but I didn't get the impression that it was obviously sticky or congealed.

And a test run.... Unfortunately my cleaning hasn't solved the warm/slow running. I might swap out the trucks with the other unit to prove it is the trucks that are causing the problems. Drat.